Authors: Ian Rankin
She was working from history books: some about the Burke and Hare case, others about the history of medicine in Scotland. The Edinburgh Room at the Central Library had proved helpful as ever, as had a contact at the National Library. Both had done photocopying for her. She’d taken a trip to Surgeons’ Hall, too, using their library and database. Hadn’t told Rebus about any of this. She knew why: because she was worried. She felt that the Arthur’s Seat case was a blind alley, and one down which John, with his need for answers, might go careering. Professor Devlin had been right about that: obsession was always a trap into which you could fall. This was history – ancient history, compared to the Balfour case. Whether the killer had known about the Arthur’s Seat coffins or not seemed irrelevant. There was no way of telling. She was conducting this research for her own satisfaction; didn’t want John reading anything more into it. He had enough on his plate without that.
There was a noise in the corridor. When the kettle clicked off, she thought no more about it. Poured the water into her mug, dunked the tea-bag a few times, then tipped it into the swing-bin. Took the mug back into her room, leaving the door open.
Kennet Lovell had arrived in Edinburgh in December 1822, aged barely fifteen. She couldn’t know whether he’d taken a coach, or walked. It wasn’t uncommon to walk such distances in those days, especially if money was an issue. One historian, in a book about Burke and Hare, speculated that Reverend Kirkpatrick had provided for Lovell’s journey, and in addition had given him an introduction to a friend, Dr Knox, recently returned from time overseas, during which he had worked as an army surgeon at Waterloo and studied in Africa and Paris. Knox had housed young Lovell for the first year or so of his life in Edinburgh. But when Lovell had started university, the two seemed to have drifted apart, and Lovell moved to lodgings in West Port …
Jean sipped her tea and flipped through the photocopied sheets: no footnotes or index, nothing to indicate the provenance of these apparent ‘facts’. Dealing as she did with beliefs and superstitions, she knew how hard it could be to sift out hard objective truths from the chaff of history. Hearsay and rumour could find their way into print. Mistakes, only occasionally pernicious, crept in. It galled her that she had no way of checking anything, had for the moment to rely on mere commentary. A case like Burke and Hare had thrown up any number of contemporary ‘experts’, who believed their testimony to be the one true and worthwhile account.
It didn’t mean she had to believe it.
More frustrating still, Kennet Lovell was a bit-player in the Burke and Hare story, existing only for that one gruesome scene, while in the history of medicine in Edinburgh his role was more negligible still. Large gaps were left in his biography. By the time she’d finished reading, she knew only that he had completed his studies, moving into the field of teaching as well as practising. He had been present at the Burke autopsy. Yet three years later he seemed to be in Africa, combining much-needed medical skills with Christian missionary work. How long he spent there she couldn’t say. His reappearance in Scotland came in the late 1840s. He set up a medical practice in the New Town, his clients probably reflecting the wealth of that enclave. One historian’s supposition had it that he had been bequeathed the bulk of the Reverend Kirkpatrick’s estate, having ‘kept in good graces with that gentleman by dint of regular correspondence down the years’. Jean would have liked to see those letters, but nobody had quoted from them in any of the books. She made a note to try tracking them down. The parish in Ayrshire might have some record, or someone at Surgeons’ Hall might know. Chances were, they couldn’t be recovered, either because they’d perished – been disposed of with Lovell’s effects when he’d died – or had gone overseas. An awful lot of historical documentation had found its way into collections overseas – mostly Canada and the US … and many of those collections were private, which meant few details of their contents were available.
She’d seen many a trail go cold, frustrated by her inability to know whether some letter or document was still in existence. Then she remembered Professor Devlin, with his dining table crafted by Lovell. Lovell, who according to Devlin was an amateur woodworker … She sifted through the papers again, sure that there was nothing in them mentioning this hobby. Either Devlin had some book, some evidence she’d failed so far to find, or else he was myth-making. This, too, she saw all the time: people who ‘just knew’ that the antique in their possession had once belonged to Bonnie Prince Charlie or Sir Walter Scott. If it turned out she only had Devlin’s word for it that Lovell had worked with wood, then the whole notion that he had left the coffins on Arthur’s Seat would begin to crumble. She sat back, annoyed with herself. All this time, she’d been working on an assumption that could turn out to be false. Lovell had left Edinburgh in 1832; the boys had stumbled on the cave containing the coffins in June 1836. Could they have gone undetected for so long?
She lifted something from the desk-top. It was a Polaroid she’d taken in Surgeons’ Hall – the portrait of Lovell. He didn’t look like a man who’d suffered the ravages of Africa. His skin was pale and smooth, his face youthful. She had pencilled the artist’s name on the back. She got up and left her room again, opened the door to her boss’s office and switched on his light. He had a shelf of thick reference books, and she found the one she needed, turned to the painter’s name, J. Scott Jauncey. ‘Active in Edinburgh 1825–35,’ she read, ‘chiefly landscapes, but some portraiture.’ After which he’d taken himself to Europe for many years before settling in Hove. So Lovell had sat for the portrait during his early years in Edinburgh, before his own travels. She wondered if such a thing was the luxury it seemed, to be afforded only by the well-off. Then she thought of Reverend Kirkpatrick … maybe the portrait had been at his request, something to be sent west to the Ayrshire parish, to remind the minister of his charge.
Again, there might be a clue buried deep within Surgeons’ Hall, some record of the portrait’s history prior to its arrival there.
‘Monday,’ she said out loud. It could wait till Monday. She had the weekend to look forward to … and a Lou Reed concert to survive.
Switching off her boss’s light, she heard another noise, much closer. The door to the outer office swung open and the lights all came on. Jean took half a step back, then saw it was just the cleaner.
‘You gave me a fright,’ she said, putting a hand to her chest.
The cleaner just smiled and put a bin-bag down, heading back into the hallway to fetch her vacuum cleaner.
‘Mind if I get started?’ she asked.
‘Go ahead,’ Jean said. ‘I’m finished here anyway.’
As she tidied her desk, she noticed that her heart was still racing, her hands shaking slightly. All her night-time walks through the museum, and this was the first time she’d been fazed. The portrait of Kennet Lovell stared at her from the Polaroid. Somehow, it seemed to her, Jauncey had failed to flatter his subject. Lovell looked young, yes, but there was a coldness to the eyes, and the mouth was set, the face full of calculation.
‘Heading straight home?’ the cleaner asked, coming in to empty her bin.
‘Might make a pit-stop at the off-licence.’
‘Kill or cure, eh?’ the cleaner said.
‘Something like that,’ Jean replied, as an unwanted image of her husband flashed up in her mind. Then she thought of something and walked back to her desk. Lifted her pen and added a name to the notes she’d taken so far.
Claire Benzie.
‘Jesus, that was loud,’ Rebus said. They were back on the pavement outside the Playhouse, and the sky, which had still been light when they’d gone in, was now dark.
‘You don’t do this sort of thing often then?’ she asked. Her own ears were ringing. She knew she was talking too loudly, overcompensating.
‘It’s been a while,’ he admitted. The crowd had been a mix of teenagers, old punks, right up to people Rebus’s own age … maybe even a year or two older. Reed had played a lot of new material, stuff Rebus hadn’t recognised, but with a few of the classics stirred into the pot. The Playhouse: last time he’d been there had probably been UB40, around the time of their second album. He didn’t want to think how long ago that was.
‘Shall we get a drink?’ Jean suggested. They’d been drinking on and off all afternoon and evening: wine with lunch, then a quick one at the Ox. A long walk down to Dean Village and along the Water of Leith. All the way down to Leith itself, with breaks on the way to park themselves on a bench and talk. Two more drinks in a pub on The Shore. They’d considered an early supper, but were still full from the Café St Honore. Walked back up Leith Walk to the Playhouse. Still early, so they’d gone into the Conan Doyle for one, then the Playhouse bar itself.
At one point Rebus had found himself saying: ‘I’d have thought you’d steer clear of the drink.’ Regretting the remark immediately. But Jean had just shrugged.
‘You mean because of Bill? That’s not the way it works. I mean, maybe it is with some people, they either become a drunk themselves or they make a pact never to touch another drop. But it’s not the booze that’s to blame, it’s the person using it. All the time Bill had his problem, it didn’t stop me indulging. I never lectured him. And it hasn’t stopped me drinking … because I know it doesn’t mean that much to me.’ She’d paused. ‘What about you?’
‘Me?’ Rebus had offered his own shrug. ‘I just drink to be sociable.’
‘And when does it start working?’
They’d laughed at that, and left the subject alone. Now, just gone eleven on a Saturday night, the street was noisy with alcohol.
‘Where do you suggest?’ Jean asked. Rebus made a show of checking his watch. There were plenty of bars he could think of, but they weren’t places he wanted Jean to see.
‘Could you stand a bit more music?’
She shrugged. ‘What kind?’
‘Acoustic. It’d be standing room only.’
She was thoughtful. ‘Is it between here and your flat?’
He nodded. ‘You know the place is a tip …’
‘I’ve seen it.’ Her eyes found his. ‘So … are you going to ask?’
‘You want to stay the night?’
‘I want you to ask me to.’
‘It’s only a mattress on the floor.’
She laughed, squeezed his hand. ‘Are you doing this on purpose?’
‘What?’
‘Trying to put me off.’
‘No, it’s just …’ He shrugged. ‘I just don’t want you—’
She interrupted him with a kiss. ‘I won’t be,’ she said.
He ran a hand up her arm, let it rest on her shoulder. ‘Still want that drink first?’
‘I think so. How far is it?’
‘Just up the Bridges. Pub’s called the Royal Oak.’
‘Then lead me to it.’
They walked hand in hand, Rebus trying his best not to feel awkward. Still he found himself scanning faces they passed, looking for ones he recognised: colleagues or ex-cons, he couldn’t have said which he’d like to meet the least.
‘Do you ever relax?’ Jean asked at one point.
‘I thought I was doing a pretty good imitation.’
‘I felt it at the concert, bits of you were elsewhere.’
‘Comes with the job.’
‘I don’t think so. Gill manages to switch off. I’d guess most of the rest of CID do too.’
‘Maybe not as much as you think.’ He thought of Siobhan, imagined her sitting at home, staring into the laptop … and Ellen Wylie festering somewhere … and Grant Hood, his bed strewn with paperwork, memorising names and faces. And the Farmer, what would he be doing? Running a cloth slowly over surfaces already clean? There were some – Hi-Ho Silvers; Joe Dickie – who barely switched on when they went to work, never mind switched off at day’s end. Others like Bill Pryde and Bobby Hogan worked hard, but left the job in the office, managed the magic of separating their personal lives from their careers.
Then there was Rebus himself, who for so long had put the job first … because it saved him having to face some home truths.
Jean broke his reverie with a question. ‘Is there a twenty-four-hour shop somewhere on the route?’
‘More than one. Why?’
‘Breakfast: something tells me your fridge won’t exactly be an Aladdin’s Cave.’
Monday morning, Ellen Wylie was back at her own desk in what everyone in the force referred to as ‘West End’, meaning the police station on Torphichen Street. Her reasoning was that it would be easier to get work done there, space not exactly being at a premium. A couple of weekend stabbings, one mugging, three domestics and an arson … these were keeping her colleagues busy. When they passed her, they asked about the Balfour case. She was waiting for Reynolds and Shug Davidson in particular – the pair forming a fearsome double act – to say something about her TV appearance, but they didn’t. Maybe they were taking pity on the afflicted; most likely they were just showing solidarity. Even in a city as small as Edinburgh, rivalries existed between stations. If the Balfour investigation shat on DS Ellen Wylie, it was in effect dumping on West End.
‘Reassigned?’ Shug Davidson guessed.
She shook her head. ‘I’m following a lead. It’s as easy to do it here as there.’
‘Ah, but here you’re a long way away from the glamour chase.’
‘The what?’
He smiled. ‘The big picture, the juicy inquiry, the
centre
of everything.’
‘I’m at the centre of the West End,’ she told him. ‘That’s good enough for me.’ Earned herself a wink from Davidson and a round of applause from Reynolds. She smiled: she was back home.
It had niggled at her all weekend: the way she’d been sidelined – bumped from liaison and dropped off at the twilight zone in which DI John Rebus worked. And from there to this – a tourist’s suicide from years back – seemed yet another snub.
So she’d come to a decision: if they didn’t want her, she didn’t need them. Welcome back to the West End. She’d picked up all her notes on the way in. They sat on her desk, a desk she didn’t need to share with half a dozen other bodies. The telephone wasn’t going constantly, Bill Pryde flapping past with his clipboard and nicotine chewing-gum. She felt safe here, and here she could safely reach the conclusion that she was on another wild-goose chase.